St Nicholas Hospice Care defends plans for hub in Burton Centre

Burton Centre Haverhill

A charity that intends to use the Burton Centre as a community hub has defended its application after the town council reasserted its opposition.

St Nicholas Hospice Care is the preferred bidder by Suffolk County Council to take over the running of the youth centre, though Haverhill Town Council is contemplating legal action against the county council over the decision.

Burton Centre Haverhill

Town councillors are outraged that their bid was rejected when youth provision is a key objective for the town and part of the localism agenda under ONE Haverhill, and using any other building would see taxpayers’ money spent making it suitable for youth services when the Burton Centre, in Camps Road, is already ideal.

Now the council is likely to launch a judical review against the county council’s after receiving encouraging feedback from the Suffolk Association of Local Authorities (SALC), whom they approached for advice.

Despite the town council’s criticism being of the county council and not the hospice, the charity is keen to reassure people that it too is aiming towards something that will benefit the town.

Kevin Clements, fund raising and marketing director for St Nicholas Hospice Care, said: “The hospice’s focus is on the Haverhill community and how we can best serve their needs.

“We are keen to work with the town council and have not ruled out the possibility of them using the Burton Centre in the future.

“We are also very keen to work with the existing community groups that use the centre and have already started having discussions with them and plan more in the coming months.

“We have been completely transparent about our proposals for the building, which we have also shared with the town council.”

The hospice hub would contain a shop and café and services for patients, families and carers, and also therapy, bereavement counselling and legal surgeries.

The existing High Street shop would remain.

A hospice spokeswoman said: “We looked at a number of buildings in the Haverhill area, but the Burton Centre is by far the best site for hospice community activity, and offers a unique opportunity for the hospice to meet the needs of the people of Haverhill.

“Suffolk County Council has told us that essential repair work is needed for the building, but our plans go even further to improve disabled access and facilities, as we want to make sure that everyone can access the building to make best use of the space.

“The hospice has the chance to bring a pot of government money – which is only available to hospices – to the town to offer services from the community centre.

“If St Nicholas Hospice Care does not bring the funding here it will go to another part of the country.”

Barbara Gale, St Nicholas Hospice Care chief executive, said: “Death and dying affects everyone so we want to be in the town to help support members of the Haverhill community during difficult times.

“When we spoke to people in the town they told us they felt Haverhill was a ‘forgotten town’ and that they wanted our hospice care to come here.

“Our plans for the Burton Centre would enable us to fulfil their wishes.

“Supporting families and young people is an important part of our work and we have not discounted hosting youth activity in the building.”

If St Nicholas Hospice Care’s planning applications are approved, it plans to turn the underused Camps Road centre into a community centre to deliver local hospice care to everyone in Haverhill and the surrounding areas.

The plans would bring the underutilised building back into full use and make it accessible to all members of the community.

Proposals for the Hospice community centre include a shop unit and café as well as services for patients, families and carers including support groups, complementary therapies, bereavement counselling and legal surgeries.

Suffolk County Council opted for the hospice bid over the town council’s youth provision idea and justified the decision saying it did not favour schemes that are taxpayer funded, thus saying a charity relying on donations is more financially sound that a local authority with precept raising powers.

However, the hospice bid is dependant on £500,000 of Department of Health funding.

This website and its associated newspaper adheres to the Independent Press Standards Organisation's Editors' Code of Practice.
If you have a complaint about editorial content which relates to inaccuracy or intrusion, then contact the
Editor by clicking here.

If you remain dissatisfied with the response provided then you can contact the IPSO by
clicking here.

Haverhill Echo provides news, events and sport features from the Haverhill area. For the best up to date information relating to Haverhill and the surrounding areas visit us at Haverhill Echo regularly or bookmark this page.

For you to enjoy all the features of this website Haverhill Echo requires permission to use cookies.

Find Out More ▼

What is a Cookie?

What is a Flash Cookie?

Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?

About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.

This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.

Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.

The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:

Revenue Science ►

A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Google Ads ►

Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Digital Analytics ►

This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.

Dart for Publishers ►

This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.

ComScore ►

ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.

Local Targeting ►

Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.

Grapeshot ►

We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.

Subscriptions Online ►

Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.

Add This ►

Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.